Oculus Rift: anti-motion sickness tech "improving"

Oculus Rift users sometimes report nausea, motion sickness and similar symptoms. Nate Mitchell, vice president of product at the VR goggles' developer, has assured that everything's being done to counter the problem.

In an interview conducted at gamescom by PCGamesN, Mitchell said, "I think that’s one of the biggest challenges."

He added: "The technology is improving rapidly on all fronts; we’re doing a lot on positional tracking, trying to solve that, which will help game developers; we’re working on our display technology; our standard orientation tracking technology; comfort. I mean, all of these factors contribute to simulator sickness."

Despite the challenge, Mitchell is working to perfect the software and hardware while helping developers better understand the causes of motion sickness.

"We’re doing everything we can to make the hardware and software work better," he said.

"But, one of the challenges is content. It’s having developers educated on what causes simulator sickness, what doesn’t. When you’re simulating reality very effectively there will always be experiences that make people dizzy in real life [that] will make people dizzy in VR. And there’s a bunch of stuff that you can do in VR that will make people dizzy which is impossible in the real world. A lot of what we’re doing right now is discovering."

Mitchell also noted that despite efforts, some people will suffer from these symptoms because of its similarity to real-life situations.

"You may be more susceptible to motion sickness than me, for example. Simulator sickness is the same way. One beautiful thing that’s really important to note is that people acclimate over time. After playing with the Rift for like two or three days you don’t get simulator sickness any more. Just like sailors getting their sea legs. The community calls it getting your VR legs."

Oculus Rift VR recently added John Carmack as a chief technology officer to help with the latency issues.